Link archive: April 23rd, 2018

Spinning jenny. — Ethan Marcotte

During the Industrial Revolution, as new machines were invented to increase output, business owners often dreamed of an entirely automated workforce—of a factory without workers. I assume their workers had different dreams.

Ethan thinks through the ethical implications of increasing automation and efficiency über alles:

I can’t stop thinking about how much automation has changed our industry already. And I know the rate of automation is only going to accelerate from here.

At the very least, maybe it’s worth asking ourselves what might happen next.

Sara Soueidan: Going Offline

Sara describes the process of turning her site into a progressive web app, and has some very kind words to say about my new book:

Jeremy covers literally everything you need to know to write and install your first Service Worker, tweak it to your site’s needs, and then write the Web App Manifest file to complete the offline experience, all in a ridiculously easy to follow style. It doesn’t matter if you’re a designer, a junior developer or an experienced engineer — this book is perfect for anyone who wants to learn about Service Workers and take their Web application to a whole new level.

Too, too kind!

I highly recommend it. I read the book over the course of two days, but it can easily be read in half a day. And as someone who rarely ever reads a book cover to cover (I tend to quit halfway through most books), this says a lot about how good it is.

The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile | The New Yorker

A profile of Susan Kare, icon designer extraordinaire.

I loved the puzzle-like nature of working in sixteen-by-sixteen and thirty-two-by-thirty-two pixel icon grids, and the marriage of craft and metaphor.

page-transitions-travelapp

A demo of page transition animations by Sarah—she’s written about how she did it. I really like it as an example of progressive enhancement: you can navigate around the site just fine, but with JavaScript you get the smooth transitions as a bonus.

All of this reminds me of Jake’s proposal for navigation transitions in the browser. I honestly think this would solve 80% of the use-cases for single page apps.

Animating Progress - Snook.ca

Jonathan goes down the rabbit hole of trying to animate a progress element.

Kap - Capture your screen

This looks like a very handy tool for doing little screencasts where you don’t need to capture the whole screen.

pacapong by kingPenguin

Pong + Pacman + Space Invaders!

The Fast and Slow of Design

Prompted by his recent talk at Smashing Conference, Mark explains why he’s all about the pace layers when it comes to design systems. It’s good stuff, and ties in nicely with my recent (pace layers obsessed) talk at An Event Apart.

Structure for pace. Move at the appropriate speed.